


in the light of day

by dizzy



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 10:26:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11804130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: Dan tells his mother about Phil. (a 2009 fic)





	in the light of day

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Leela for looking over this for me!

"The boy again?" Dan's mum asks. 

His stomach drops. His posture is suddenly straight as a pin. His shoulders are tense. His jaw clenches. He's a cornered animal ready for a fight. 

She glances at him and in a moment she reads that, then just rolls her eyes. "Oh, fine. Keep your secrets." 

*

He thinks about it for days. 

A week of long talks with Phil, of posting those kinds of pictures that make him half mortified and half exhilarated, because he knows what the look on Phil's face is now when Dan posts one of those pictures and that's enough to make Dan want to take an entire album of them. But more than that: it's enough for Dan to know that he wants to spend a very long time making Phil's face do those weird squinty smiles where he shows too much teeth and then covers up with his hand. He wants to be going to visit Phil and going on dates with Phil and spending every night talking to Phil for as long as Phil will put up with him, and that means some things are unavoidable. 

He finds his mum in the garden, on her knees weeding her little vegetable patch. She's always been the sort that likes to get her hands dirty when she wants to clear her mind. After a fight with his dad she can usually be found out here, channeling her frustration into ripping things apart to ultimately make them more beautiful. 

"Need help?" He asks. 

She gives him a surprised look. He never helps. She used to ask, but eventually - like with most things she's ever asked him to do with her - she gave up and just let him be. 

(His chest feels weird and heavy when he thinks about how she doesn't ask much now.) 

"Won't turn it down," she says, wiping her forehead with her upper arm. It's not hot out but she's been at it a while. 

He wonders briefly what's on her mind, but there isn't room enough in his brain to think about his mum having her own worries. 

Unless they're about him. Are they about him? Paranoia is an invasive little fucker. 

It takes him ten minutes to figure out what he's even doing. She laughs at him and corrects him when she realizes he's halfway to digging up her winter lettuce. He's embarrassed to have gotten it so wrong, but her laughter is gentle. She's his mum, she's never really laughing at him. 

"I'm, ah." He starts to say, and suddenly he wants to just - not. 

But he has to. 

"Yes?" She asks, raising an eyebrow at him. Some of her hair's escaped her ponytail and is sticking to her cheek alongside a smear of dirt. He looks at her and sees his own eyes staring back, except she's got lines at the corners and he's not sure when they got there. 

"I'm gonna spend next week with Phil," he says. 

He said he was visiting a uni friend the first time, to stay with a mate in London the second. 

"Phil's Manchester, then?" She asks. 

The third time he inched closer to the truth: said it was Manchester, said it was a friend he's had for a while. 

"Yeah," he says. "Phil's in Manchester." 

"And he's nice?" She asks. 

"His parents-" Dan starts to say, fully prepared with the lie that they'll be there. 

He doesn't need it. 

"Him, I mean," she says. "He's a nice boy, you like him?" 

"Mum." His face goes hot. 

"I hear you, you know. Thin walls."

He's mortified, half a dozen nights of various late night activities flashing through his mind. "What?" 

"You laugh at lot when you're talking to him." She's hacking at a stubborn root, not even looking at him. Her voice sounds perfectly unbothered. "I just thought, he must be nice. Must be special for you to want to spend so much time with." 

"He's really nice," Dan says. 

"Well," she says, sitting back on her legs. "I think we're done here." 

Dan knows he hasn't helped at all. He frowns. This feels unfinished. Not the garden, but... everything else. "We are?" 

She studies him, and then says, "How about you let me go wash this filth off and then we'll go for an ice cream before your brother and your dad get home?" 

Dan's supposed to be signing on to talk to Phil in a few minutes, but he figures - it can wait. Ice cream won't take long. 

"Sure," he says. 

She smiles and those lines at the corner of her eyes go soft. 

* 

He's licking salted caramel off his cone when she says, "So is Phil at uni?"

"He graduated," Dan says. He adds, a touch defensively: "Just a few months ago. It's not weird."

"I didn't say it was." Her voice is still light, but she's certainly doing her own version of prying. 

He always used to balk when she'd do that. But he doesn't now, he's trying not to. He's not sure why but it feels very important that his parents not start off hating Phil. 

He wants to do this right. 

"He studied English language," Dan says. "And film stuff. He makes videos." 

"You must have a lot in common," she says. "To want to spend a whole week together." 

"So much, mum. He likes all the same movies and music as me." His ice cream is dripping. He catches it with his tongue before it gets the back of his hand sticky, but fails and just smears it everywhere. 

His mum laughs and hands him something to wipe it up with. "Hope he's less messy an eater." 

"He's not," Dan says, a sudden warmth to his voice because he's remembering Phil trying to eat a hamburger at the Halloween gathering and how the sauces went everywhere and Dan had to dab at a spot on his shirt. 

It was such a good night. 

His mum is looking at him so sweetly, and like she's holding back an urge to say something. 

"What?" He asks. What was his expression, to make her look at him like that? 

"You're just happy." She puts her spoon down, her own ice cream neatly contained in a cup. "I"m glad. You've not been very happy this year." 

Instinct tells him to argue. Instinct tells him that a parent coming too close to an emotional truth is something to be avoided at all cost. 

But what does he argue? What's the point of arguing? 

"Guess not," he says, half-shrugging. His ice cream is suddenly very fascinating. 

* 

He yelled it at her once almost three years ago. He'd been even more confused and even angrier and she'd been telling him off for something that wasn't even that important and he'd let hormones and temper get the best of him. 

He'd yelled that she didn't even know him. That if she knew him she'd know how bad his life was, that he's called names at school, that some of them are true. That he's bisexual - and he can still, two years on, remember the silence ringing between them.

He's not even sure what he'd expected. To be punished for it. To be told he was wrong and he wasn't really what he said he was, or that she didn't want a son who liked other boys. To hear that he was a disappointment or that he was going to hell. 

But she hadn't said any of that. She'd just stood there, impassive and blank faced, and said, "Well, now I know."

He'd shown up a week later with a girlfriend and they haven't spoken about it since. 

*

But she does know. 

She knows he likes boys. 

She knows that Phil makes him happy. 

And the world hasn't stopped turning. 

*

"I told your dad you'll be out next week," his mum says. It's early morning still, but he'll need to catch the bus to the train station soon. "He says you're not to miss out on any more work shifts for this.” 

"I got it sorted," he says around a mouthful of toast with jam on. He still hasn't gotten around to tell his parents about the whole... work thing. Or the sudden lack of it entirely in his life. That's a fight to be fought another day.

"Do you need a ride to the train station?" She asks. "Won't be too far out of my way." 

He'll always take the chance to skip a bus ride. 

In the car he's texting Phil the update, celebrating a minor victory together. His bag is at his feet, the heavy laptop pressing against his shins. 

"When we do get to meet Phil, then?" She asks. 

"I don't know," Dan says, then glances over. "You want to meet him?" 

"Of course we do," she says. 

Dan's not so sure that it's a 'we' but he does at least believe that _she does_. "You'll like him better than me. He's polite." 

She laughs. "I wouldn't know what to do with a polite one, I think. Already don't know what I'll do when you and your brother are both gone and there won't be anyone shouting the roof down over a video game or playing music in the middle of the night. Or both!" 

Dan grins. "You shouldn't have gotten me that DDR board if you didn't want me playing it when I can't sleep." 

"I'll challenge you again one of these days," she say. 

Dan remembers that. He hasn't thought about it in ages, but he remembers it - that one night when neither of them could sleep and she found him in the lounge playing his dance game with the volume turned down low. 

He'd expected her to shout at him to turn it off and go to bed. Instead she'd asked him to teach her how to play and they'd gone back and forth laughing and dancing until his dad shouted at both of them. She wasn't actually too bad at it. 

"You can practice while I'm gone," he says. "And we'll play again."

She smiles a happy, surprised smile. 

* 

The car idles near the train station. He sits in the seat for a few seconds too long until she says his name in a curious voice. 

He fumbles down with his phone, fingers shaking slightly. It only takes a few seconds to pull up what he wants. He tilts his phone to her and shows. "This is Phil." 

It's a picture of the two of them leaned in close, heads touching. There's nothing overt about it, but - somehow, still, there is. It's the picture they took but didn't post, the one he's pulled up to look at at least five times a day since the last time he saw Phil. 

Phil isn’t his boyfriend yet, not really. Not _officially_. 

But he hopes to change that by the time he sees her next. 

"He does look polite," she says, voice gentle. "Tell him I said hello, won't you?"

"Yeah," Dan says, breathing out. "I will."

**Author's Note:**

> [read and reblog on tumblr](http://alittledizzy.tumblr.com/post/164187492615/title-in-the-light-of-day-rating-pg-word-count) :)
> 
>  
> 
> [levar burton voice] and if you like this, you should check out [Tequila Moonrise](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10422183). but you don't have to take my word for it...*
> 
>  
> 
> (*actually, you do)


End file.
